Titan

That piece of junk can't be called an alternative. Haven you seen how cra*ppy ARM performance is in 32bit emulation mode?

Even on native app arm chips can barely compete with the lowest end of the airmont 3 years old Atom.

Maybe the non-Intel i5/i7 Surface models, sure. Although I don't even know if Microsoft makes any of those anymore. Even the Surface Go has a more powerful CPU than an ARM. I definitely would not compare this thing to an actual Intel i5/i7 Surface though.

Distinguished

This is fine if you use only Win10s mode and only use MS store apps that are native to arm... You you move to real Windows10 and use real windows programs then Surface go is much faster than this. This is just fine if you use internet for example Chrome and you web apps like O365 or Google apps... This very fine device... but in those situations Chromebook is also fine device.
It all depends on what you want to do with your machine. But running windows programs in emulator mode is not for this!

Titan

This is fine if you use only Win10s mode and only use MS store apps that are native to arm... You you move to real Windows10 and use real windows programs then Surface go is much faster than this. This is just fine if you use internet for example Chrome and you web apps like O365 or Google apps... This very fine device... but in those situations Chromebook is also fine device.
It all depends on what you want to do with your machine. But running windows programs in emulator mode is not for this!

This device along with the Surface Go allow you to switch to full Windows. It might not be as practical as having something native like the i5/i7 Surface models but it's definitely better than having one that's limited to the app store.

But as far as Chromebooks go, they may be decent devices but again they are limited by the Chrome OS.

I'd be interested to hear about the performance after the switch, with Office 2019 and Adobe Acrobat Reader. If there is no noticeable lag when dealing with larger documents, then this machine might be considered competitive.

Distinguished

You can get 8GB ram and 256GB+ SSD from anyone else for $1000 or this plus all the headaches of ARM compatibility issues and low performance. But hey it can download your email in standby... Or you can wait 6 seconds after powering up a real device.

Titan

I'd be interested to hear about the performance after the switch, with Office 2019 and Adobe Acrobat Reader. If there is no noticeable lag when dealing with larger documents, then this machine might be considered competitive.

Considerable, there's plenty of better devices out there and I'd far rather have an i5 or i7 than an ARM any day of the week.